a skip of your heart and a flicker of light

Disclaimer: I do not own The Avengers.

Note: A birthday fic request that was going to just be this cute little thing and then turned into this...thing we have here.

He should have known.

He should have known that the words, "She's in," to Nick Fury would be met with the silence that was a half-beat too long, not even the length of a breath, the kind of silence that leads to a stark white room and her red hair so bright and his back too light without the weight of his quiver.

But there will be time for second guessing later.

Clint tries not to look to often at her, the woman with the voice like torn velvet, sharper than SHIELD's finest blades, the one who said, "Natasha," like a challenge and a curse and a confession.

What's your name?

But the room is too white and her hair keeps bleeding into the edges of his line of sight, and it's with a lurch that Clint cuts off the ensuing metaphor because the screaming lingers still in his ears.

Are you a coward, or just an idiot?

"Trouble?" she asks, out of the corner of her mouth. Clint has to make a concentrated effort not to whip his head around - it's the first thing either of them have said in at least forty minutes.

He wonders how long Fury is going to keep this up.

Clint looks at the seemingly edgeless wall behind her head and says nothing.

I have to stitch you up - blink twice if you don't want to bleed to death.

—

She's covered in blood and she's not sure how much is hers.

Though to be fair a lot of it is hers.

It all ends in the kind of lavish ballroom that little girls are supposed to dream about; it's very story book this whole thing, and she's not sure how that makes her feel.

He, Cli—Hawkeye, has been tracking her for weeks on end and gets caught in her fight—it's his fault really, this whole mess, because now she's bleeding and possibly dying and he could at least have the decency to be present for the completion of his mission, couldn't he?

But no.

He's taking the girl back to her mother.

He's taking her target.

And the client had come to collect.

Suffice it to say that they weren't exactly pleased with the turn of events.

Because she lost.

She'll have a scar from that last arrow for the rest of her life.

—

"Step away from the girl."

From this close he can almost see the hairs of the back of her neck stand up. That's an exaggeration, but her back is rigid and her movement barely a fraction too slow—last night's fire fight was intense enough that they both came out injured, though clearly her more than him.

Little Natasha looks at him from her place bound to a chair.

There is a kind of dead coldness there that chills him to the core.

He can't decide if it's better or worse than the screaming.

The people buying the nine year old should be here any moment; Clint really should have just done away with the Black Widow and just whisked the child away, but something had stopped him. He tries to push the image of the dark stain that had blossomed so large on the Widow's side; knives are plentiful here.

Her exit with the girl had been slow.

It's not pity.

"No windows this time?" she asks without turning. Clint flexes the fingers grasping his bow. It's no surprise she's kept tabs on him, just as he has her. She is the very best Russia has ever seen. He's ready for a fight.

"Move away from the girl."

"She's seen enough death, Mr. Barton. Surely one more won't hurt much."

He will not falter.

"You're good, I have to give you that."

And then she is everywhere.

—

Okay, she'll admit, she is a little surprised at how well he fights at close range. She's also a little stunned at how many opportunities he's had to take her out, and how many he hasn't taken.

She's off.

The gash is tearing open through quick, inexact stitches.

And then he's pressing into her side with the tip of his arrow and her trembling legs betray her by collapsing in a heap on the marble floor.

At least she'll have twin marks.

There are voices outside and she goes to buck him off and scream; they'll kill him on sight, and her—she considers the state of her body and something freezes her breath in her lungs.

They'll cut their losses.

But then his weight is bearing down on her, his hand on her mouth and she jerks up as hard as she can even though the last of the stitches are lost in the effort. His eyes are bright and she will not give in to her fear.

Do you want to live?

He's asking the question in the silence with the fierceness of his expression; it stuns her somewhere deep and closed inside that she doesn't know the answer.

—

The first time he calls her anything but Natasha she's barely conscious enough to hear.

It's been 78 hours since he'd returned to that pristine ballroom and found her so still that Clint had feared that the favour he'd called in to Coulson had been for nothing. But she'd roused, enough for him to get her name (he still can't tell if it was a lie) and get them out.

A seedy motel bed is better than cold floor.

"Hey. Hey."

He can't do it now—he can't extinguish that just burning ember that remains in her half-lidded eyes, because then he would really be a coward and her question would ring in his ears forever.

"Natasha."

Nothing. She's just breathing, shallow and too slow.

"Natasha," he tries again, before moving on quickly to every permutation. "Nat. Tasha. Tash."

He touches her just barely and she jerks awake. Clint almost feels badly for it.

"Tash?" she asks with a faint snort and if he wasn't supposed to be her killer Clint probably would have laughed.

After that broken syllables of her name keep falling unbidden from his lips and Natasha keeps looking at him as though she'd like nothing more than to smack him upside the head, but she never tells him to stop.

So he doesn't.

—

They'll break me.

She will never admit her own apprehension when SHIELD's evac finally arrives and hustles her away from the only sort of home she's ever had.

No they won't.

—

Natasha keeps a dagger pressed so close to her thigh that Clint almost cuts himself on it once, during the hours she lay only just awake and he pressed back against the infection threatening the gash in her side. He yanks up her shirt and flicks his eyes away from the already healing circle, down to the terrible stitches, down to where the edges disappear beneath skin tight shorts.

There is something glinting at the very hem.

Well then.

He thinks of that dagger now; he adds it to the list of the possible four ways out of this room, greatly reduced from the eleven, had Clint his arrows and bow.

"Your side," he says without moving his lips.

"Fine," is the curt, less than whispered reply.

Clint looks past her head again and takes in the tightness around her eyes and mouth. Before he can think of a subtle way to call her bullshit, the door opens. Armed SHIELD uniforms extend as far as he can see down the hall.

Trouble, indeed.

He's on his feet before Director Fury even steps into the room. Just behind his shoulder, Natasha rises slowly. There is challenge in the very hum of the air.

"What is this?"

One good eye sweeps over them; they're hinging on wrecked and everyone seems to know it.

"You should be debriefing with Agent Coulson."

Something plunges cold everywhere. There's just enough time for Clint to throw himself in front of Natasha before dozens of men burst into the room like a terrible black wave.

As his fist makes its first connection, he thinks despairingly that she was right to doubt him.

—

She wants to tell him, in the split second between the fray exploding and that cold silence, that she can take care of herself, thank you very much, and that he doesn't need to go throwing himself in front of her like she's some helpless little girl.

But of course there isn't exactly a long enough moment to have that conversation.

Natasha has time to stab or debilitate exactly eight men before she's grabbed on both sides. She yanks away but the Hawk's careful stitches are too fresh and the pain is more than she wants it to be. A hand grabs for her waist, sensing weakness, and she lets out a noise that could be a scream.

But Natasha Romanov does not scream.

She can just make him out in the flurry of pitch black and movement—they lock eyes for just a moment, but it is a moment too long. Something pierces the skin of her neck and she shrieks, lashing out and probably breaking someone's jaw, but it's as though her arms and legs are being filled with lead, weighing her down and filling her head with cotton.

Hawkeye moves faster than she thought he ever could, trying to close the few feet between them. "Tash!"

It's a warning and a plea and it's anger and frustration and fear and her vision is going black and she can just barely see him now, redoubling his efforts—it takes five dark forms to restrain him—it's so strange to watch; they've known each other for all of four days and yet— "Tasha! Tash!"

She still can't believe she lets him call her all these things that are not her name.

I'm Clint. I suppose it's only fair you know my name too.

It's too bad, really, she thinks as the world goes cold and dark.

He'd been the only challenge she's had in years.

And no one's ever broken up her name before and made her feel whole.

—

"Tasha!"

The door slams shut and Clint hurtles himself against it; bruises take shape over the bruises that haven't quite left yet and it's awful, this hot desperation clawing around in his chest, because he hadn't made his choice for it to be so brutally undone by people who didn't even care—

The door opens. He almost takes out Coulson, standing there with an expression that is filled with horrible understanding.

"Where is she?"

Coulson doesn't reply immediately, and Clint has to resist the urge to rip someone's arm off—not Coulson of course because he does genuinely like his SHIELD handler and well, at least Coulson doesn't look so smug about this whole "capturing the Black Widow" train that Fury's conducting right now.

"Where—"

"Medical Bay," the older man says calmly. "You really need to work on your needlework, Clint."

Clint makes a noise that could probably be a snarl. Coulson's gaze is patient and Clint wants to hate him for it. When did he get so worked up over the life of a target?

Was it when he had her pinned to a cold marble floor, her breath hot against his hand, and she'd just closed her eyes? As if she really truly didn't care if she lived or died?

He paces the floor, too twitchy to stay still, determinedly avoiding the small smattered droplets of Natasha's blood on the far side of the room.

"They're going to interrogate her," Coulson continues, and his prized agent stops his frenzied movement with a lurch. "I'll be there the whole time. I'm your primary. I was in contact the entire mission."

They both know that's a lie.

The last thing Coulson heard was the faint hiccuping of a little girl and Clint's voice, murmuring, "I've got you. We're going home, okay? I've got you. You're okay."

But even Clint doesn't know that.

His charge isn't exactly comforted.

"She's—" he starts, and falters, because what is she, exactly?

Coulson just looks at him, and for the first time Clint feels like he's about to buckle under such strange and gentle scrutiny.

"She's strong, Clint." And Coulson puts a hand on his shoulder, the gesture and the tone so familiar that anyone other than Agent Coulson would have received a black eye if they'd tried. "I'll be back soon."

Coulson disappears back to the slated dark colour of the ship and Clint is left to sink in a faint daze to the floor.

She's stronger than he is, at any rate.

—

When it's over she's spent a day recovering, given a retina scan, defended every stupid decision she's ever made, and measured for a catsuit. A man named Agent Coulson is walking her to her new quarters and she just joined SHIELD.

She didn't see this one coming.

"I'm your liaison, handler if you will," he says, strangely pleasant as if they were chatting over coffee and not headed to her barracks as if she were a soldier, wearing the clothes of a man who spent so long trying to kill her. "Agent Barton's as well."

Natasha catches the cuff of Hawk—Clint's sweater in her thumb and forefinger, staring down at the faded green and frayed edges. The white ties hang uneven down the front and it's vaguely irritating. Agent Coulson is staring straight ahead when she looks up again.

Is it compassion or pity?

Or something else altogether?

"Here we are," Agent Coulson says, snapping her from her daze. It occurs to Natasha that she doesn't have the faintest idea how they arrived here from—from wherever it is she changed her life twenty minutes ago. The door hisses open at her touch and she looks at the bed and the grey walls and feels, for the first time in a very long time, utterly lost.

"Thank you," she starts, turning back to look at the man still standing in the doorway. He smiles faintly.

"Coulson. Phil Coulson. "

"Thank you, er, Coulson." The name taste strangely warm and sweet on her tongue. So strange.

"Is—"

She can't phrase the question.

"I can send for him, if you like."

His kindness makes her, for whatever reason, want to burst into tears for the first time since she was eleven. Natasha swallows and can't summon more words, but the man just smiles again, just a little, and nods before closing the door between them.

—

He'd been released to his room on the condition that he remain there until Coulson returned.

Clint tries his hardest to keep himself in his most efficient headspace for long waits; god knows he's had his fair share of security details.

It's not working.

He's been stuck in his room going on about four hours when there's knocking on the door. Clint realizes belatedly that he could have spent all this time cleaning himself up; he's still in yesterday's clothes, stained with blood—Natasha's still wearing his favourite sweater.

Isn't she?

Coulson stands in the doorway, unperturbed as Clint yanks off his shirt as fast as he can and digs around for something clean. After a moment, it's as if the past four weeks never happened; SHIELD never felt threatened by mercenaries darker than theirs, Coulson never sent him packing for the cold—

and he never defied his mission objective by saving someone's life instead of ending it.

"Come with me," says his handler now, and Clint has so many questions but not enough sense of mind to begin asking. Except for one.

"Is—" He falters. Will he always be doing that when it comes to her?

"She's alright," Coulson replies as though he hadn't stumbled, his tone almost soothing as if he were coaxing children back to sleep after a nightmare. Does Coulson—Phil have kids? A family? Or is he as lost and alone as the rest of them leaving here with weapons in hand?

"Our newest recruit."

Clint is surprised, in spite of the fact that he spent two whole days trying to convince her it was the smartest thing to do. They stop only a single turn away from his own quarters and Coulson leaves him standing alone in front of a door that looks identical to his.

It takes him a few seconds to lift his hand and knock, and then he wonders if she'd even heard the quiet rapping of his knuckles. "Nat?" His voice is scratched and hoarse from lack of use; Clint clears his throat with a cough and tries again.

"Nat, it's me."

"I think it's open," comes her voice through the walls and something aches in his chest, relief and laughter and too many things to quantify.

"There's a button by the bed, or the door," he says. "I can't open it from out here without you."

After a moment the door opens and that ache from before swells up again; Clint takes in Natasha on the bed, sitting against the wall with her knees pulled up against her chest, her chin leaning forward and her eyes not quite finding his. She's still wearing his sweater; it dwarfs her slender frame, hiding her curves away in folds of faded cotton.

"Hey," Clint remains in the doorway, suddenly unsure whether or not he should be here—if she wants him here.

"Hi."

This is the most vulnerable he's ever seen her and that's sort of alarming, because not too long ago she was dying in his arms. He takes a step into the room and she doesn't tell him to leave, so he crosses in the rest of the way and sits down beside her, keeping a respectable distance between them.

"Alright?" he asks, in lieu of a real question. He wants to know what happened in all the time they've been separated, wants to know what Fury grilled her on, wants to know how his life became so upended.

A pause.

"Yeah."

"Good." Clint leans his head back on the wall and tries not to think too much on this lengthy silence. "Do you want me to go?"

He looks over at Natasha's profile, beautiful and dangerous and sort of frightening, because he's probably in love with her already if he looks hard enough, and Clint thinks again of that glinting silver knife and knows that if he's not careful he could cut himself on all her sharp edges.

He takes her silence as a yes and goes to stand, but— "No."

Clint turns back and this is the first time they've made eye contact in hours and hours and her gaze is sort of hard to hold onto.

"No," she repeats.

So he sits back down. "Okay."

They're just sitting and breathing and that's just it, it's okay, and eventually Natasha's eyelids flutter closed and she's leaning so far that when Clint shifts (for comfort's sake) her head just falls on his shoulder, her hair spreading like a curtain over the white of his t shirt

(and that's sort of frightening too, because her senses were so sharp even in half-sleep so close to death that he's not sure what it means that she does nothing when he grabs the blanket too and just lets it fall over her).

There'll be time tomorrow, time for him to show her around the airship and to spar so they can learn everything there is to know about each other really, time for Coulson to shield them from Fury's scrutiny while everyone figures out what they're doing here, now.

Clint knows that this quiet moment is unique and sort of precious, because she'll wake up soon and probably give him that look, the one she wore when she questioned his judgement so fiercely, and they'll go back to being Hawkeye and the Black Widow instead of Clint and Nat or Tash or Tasha but for now there's this moment and okay—

And to be completely honest Clint knows this life and this business and he'll take what he can get.

Author's Note: I find Natasha's head hard to get into.

Writing for huge fandoms freaks me out. Did I do okay?

*rolls around in OTP/TFIOS feels*

Annie